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Tess Perry
Abstract
All students need to be challenged appropriately, which means meeting students at their level. Some may be more advanced and others may need extra support. The technique of tiering provides options and alternatives aimed towards students of a variety of levels. The different levels described in this chapter include student readiness to learn and be challenged and their individual learner profile. All students should be sufficiently challenged to ensure engagement regardless of student’s previous knowledge and skills. By determining student’s readiness level and ability a teacher will be able to tier lessons, assignments and assessments appropriately. This chapter provided numerous examples of ways to tier classroom activities, these include, learning contracts, learning menus, RAFTS, Tic-Tac-Toe boards, change the verb prompts, cubing, one word summaries and many others.
Synthesis
Many of the examples described in the chapter allow students to choose different portions of the assessments or assignments. Giving students autonomy was a popular idea among our class’s reflections. Many reflections positively mentioned that allowing students choices in their assignments gives students independence and control which will hopefully keep them engaged, motivated and involved. Everyone appreciated the ample amount of tiering suggestions. I think as new teachers many of us feel that creating enough lessons, assignments and assessments and also individualizing each activity to meet all students’ needs is overwhelming and we may run out of creative ideas. Another point of trepidation is finding the appropriate balance of differentiated lessons, we cannot teach each student individually all day. Sharing ideas and methods that have worked for other teachers is helpful! Some of the tiering examples that were frequently mentioned in our reflections were learning menus and contracts and Tic-Tac-Toe boards.
Kiera Timme
In Chapter 5, of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, the author Rick Wormeli advocates for the use of “tiering” (p.56) as a means to better differentiate assignments and assessments. Tiering is a process by which teachers increase, or decrease, the level of difficulty of an assignment or assessment depending of the learners “readiness levels” (Wormeli, p56). This idea echoes back to Vgotsky idea of a “zone of proximal development,” (Wormeli, p73) in which the learner is given tasks, that are not too easy or too difficult, but can be achieved through the support of a guide or, as in this case, a teacher. The chapter provides several examples of ways to tier assessments. These include: equalizers, learning contracts, learning menus, tic-tac-toe boards, cubing, summarization pyramids, and one-word summaries.
Of all the ideas presented in this chapter, the one that appealed to me the most was the use of learning menus. Not only did I enjoy the novelty of using a menu format, I really loved the fact that this method gives students the opportunity to make their own choices. When students are able to make decisions about their educations they are more likely to be motivated to complete the task. The learning menu has other added benefits. In having a student choice component, teachers are provided with a great opportunity to incorporate the multiple intelligences (MI) theory into the mix. Each element on the menu could be constructed with one or more intelligences in mind. This way, students provided with an opportunity to demonstrate their learning in a way that suits them, and it provides teachers with another opportunity to assess students’ multiple intelligences.
Frank Makuch
Tiering is an important aspect of differentiation. Tiering to cater to more and less advanced students allows all students to be adequately challenged and therefore more likely to be engaged. Certain aspects of a unit should be tiered and not necessarily everything about the subject. Tiering for advance
d students will involve thinking of creative questions that might force the student to manipulate the information in different ways. Adding unexpected elements or reframing a topic is a good way to get more advanced students more stimulating ways to show their knowledge and understanding. The author offers different activities to tier assignments. These include learning contracts, learning menus, tic tac toe boards, cubing and summarization pyramids. The most interesting and useful of these is the tic tac toe board in which students are able to differentiate for themselves. They are given a tic tac toe board that has different assignments in the squares. The student gets to choose which three assignments he is to do provided they are in a line. Another way is to use RAFTS. This is a process by which students assume a role or perspective to write from on a specific topic. The audience must be kept in mind as well. Many of these ideas seem like they could work very well in a social studies or english class. Tiering in a mathematics class seems like it would be much more difficult. Because math classes are more linear than other courses I think tiering might have to involve letting some students veer off the path that the rest of the students take.
Garrett Hodgkins
In chapter 5 the writers discuss how to "tier" a students assessments or problems to that particular student's readiness level. This is something that goes two ways. It does no only mean toning something down for someone who isn't quite at the expected readiness level, i t also means toning it up for those who are past it, that way everyone can be nurtured and no one gets left behind, or doesn't get to meet their full potential. The book goes into detail on how to do both of these, while avoiding some of the pitfalls that could come with. It also goes into learning contracts, a tool where the teacher can set the standards of what they want the student to meet, but the student gets the opportunity to negotiate due dates, and things of that nature. It goes into many other styles of tiering as well. I particularly enjoyed this chapter because I always new that I would have to find a way to make sure that students who were not as ready as other students could still learn and perform well in my class, as well as cater to those students who were ready to move behind the normal class average. This chapter gave me some useful tips and strategies so that I will be able to do so.
Sean Falasca
Tiering [[#|assignments]] for students who are at different levels of learning is the opening of chapter five. Differentiating assignments at different levels of learning is something teachers do to make understanding easier for s student, not make the assignment easier than everyone else. We don’t need to tier for every assignment. We should expect all students to demonstrate full proficiency. Having a student start out at the benchmark, or lowest point, may inhibit their learning. Starting at full proficiency guarantees the student the opportunity to demonstrate their full knowledge and understanding. Using equalizers is also a way to make sure students have full comprehension. Grouping elements together that don’t seem alike, but are on totally different spectrums of one another. If a student can pick out continuums from a lesson then they most likely have an excellent mastery of the lesson. Another helpful tool a teacher can use to closely monitor is a learning contract. You can set rules and checkpoints to present behavior and content expectations. My favorite activity for tiering is the RAFT(S) activity. Choosing content and presenting different scenarios to effectively communicate the big ideas is an excellent idea. Having students choose their own roles, audience, format, or topic (or time) is a great way for students to show you how they like to learn and be creative in their demonstrations. I never thought that by using certain verbs, writing prompts could seem so much more alive to a student. I will try and use this strategy because as a student I remember looking at some prompts and not being very excited or motivated to write it even if I had a lot of knowledge to work with.
Tess Perry
Tiering is the process of modifying assessments and assignments to best meet individual student needs. Students individual needs can be described as student readiness to learn and be challenged and their individual learner profile. The goal of tiering is to challenge all students regardless of their previous knowledge and skills either above grade level, at grade level or below. The teacher’s role is to identify which level each student is currently working at and be creative to challenge all students without the students realizing who may be a little ahead and who are slightly behind. Many of the examples described allow students to choose different portions of the assessments or assignments. Tic-Tac-Toe boards provide three options in three rows; students pick and choose their task, one item from each row. This example, like others mentioned, gives student’s independence and control over their assignment but since the teacher creates all the options the concept that is assessed is similar for all students. In previous readings regarding differentiation the concept sounds ideal, but the thought of actually carrying it out, modifying lessons, assignments and assessments seemed a little overwhelming. The idea of allowing students to choose their assignment takes a little pressure off me as the teacher. I would imagine students would select items that they are interested in, which will help keep them engaged, or select items that play to their strengths. One example of tiering that interested me was the one-word summaries. Having to describe a concept in one word requires serious thought and consideration. Encouraging students to think deeply about concepts in my lesson will be awesome!
Kaitlyn Bowie
The focus of this chapter is on the idea of providing options and alternatives for students who might be on different learning levels. One of the strategies talked about in this chapter is the splitting up of lessons into tiers. A teacher starts off by setting a standard bar for the entire class, which means that a teacher must not undermine the intelligence of the students. At the same time, a teacher must make sure not to set the bar too high, or else they risk receiving inaccurate data about the intelligence of their students. Setting a median bar allows for teachers to easily add information for those students who require more of a challenge, and further break down a standard for students who are struggling. This practice is something I would certainly try to integrate into my classroom. However, I am concerned with how students will receive when they are told they are beneath the class standard and will require alternative work. Some students would take that as an insult, and feel their peers will label them as stupid because they fall under the “remedial” category. There is also the parental aspect to think about. Some parents may blame the teacher because their child is beneath the standard, or why their student is not being placed above the standard. While I do agree that students should be challenged and helped as needed, I struggle with balancing the ethical and emotional aspect that attaches to it, and the stigma that follows leveled instruction.
Tori Penney
This chapter was very exciting for me because I have been thinking about this a lot as we have been reading about assessments. How do I manage to “tier” the work and assessments so that my students can honestly be successful and grow? All students need to be challenged a little or else they cannot grow. How do I challenge students enough and not too much? And how do I manage the different levels of challenge needed by the different students? Tiering helps meet the needs of students who are not ready yet, who aren’t interested, or who have trouble because of their learning styles. “Ratcheting,” which is what I have been thinking mostly about, is when you adjust solely because of a student’s readiness level, and not their interests or learning styles. The list on page 57 and 58 was very interesting to me because it gave ideas on how to challenge a student further, and since I plan on going into Gifted & Talented education, that was really important and stuck out a lot to me. A suggestion that Wormeli gives is a learning contract. In a learning contract students get to move at their own pace, and simply check off the things they have already completed. I feel like this is good for some students but not all. A lot of students lack the ambition to continue going on without the full guidance that traditional teaching gives. I believe giving some students the option would be good, but you always need to make sure they are actually pushing themselves and focusing on the work at hand. This is something I may use in my classroom, if we get stuck in a rut.
Jon Delorme
Chapter 5 – Tiering Assessments
In a differentiated classroom, tiering is often used to provide the right level of challenge to the right students. The example given in Chapter Five is how a teacher might tier a lesson about graphing mathematical equations. For Early Readiness Students certain aspects of the problem are given to the student to help them understand the concept. For Advanced Readiness Students the problem difficulty is increased, something “Ann Tomlinson calls ‘ratcheting’ up or down the challenge level (56).” It is my understanding that this is one of the hot items discussed about Differentiated Instruction. To some teachers it may seem like being easy on some students and harder on others. I believe Wormeli is trying to explain is that the job of teachers is to help students understand and learn. If providing tiering helps a student do so them I am all in. People learn at different speeds, so why not provide assistance where assistance is due?
Another suggestion to help tiering lessons is using a learning contract. I am less inclined to use this tool than learning menus, however. Learning menus are similar to “drop-down menus in a favorite word processing package” where a student can choose specific criteria they want to meet (62). The teacher establishes certain tasks that are non-negotiable. But, the student can set up their own checkpoints on progress and other areas they want to explore. The most appealing method of tiering to me is using the Tic-Tac-Toe Board, and I will certainly be using this in my classroom in the future. This concept allows students to fill out tasks in separate columns. Each task utilizes one of the multiple intelligences. I really like this idea and when I first read about it over winter break I instantly knew I wanted to implement it some day.
Caroline Murphy
The whole concept of tiering is a little bit confusing to me, and I think I would need to learn more about it in order to figure out how to implement it in my classroom. But the chapter did have a lot of good ideas about how to give students choices for how they want to be assessed, and how to also appeal to the many different learning styles in a differentiated classroom. I think the idea of a learning contract between a student and their teacher could be a good thing, because it keeps the student personally accountable for their work and gives them the needed autonomy. But I can also see how such a long list of rules and requirements could be overwhelming and off-putting to a student, so I think that kind of rubric should be used sparingly and only when the teacher knows that it will be very beneficial to the particular student. The ‘change the verb’ form of tiering is something that I would definitely use in my future classroom. I had never realize before how much impact the wording of a question or assignment could have on the way a student perceives it, but it really does make a big difference. Being as specific as possible really helps students get the most out of the assessment, and it encourages direct, purpose-driven thinking. Any project or assessment based off of a question or prompt should be active thought-provoking, because an assessment that is designed in a way that does not actively engage student thinking does not showcase their best work.
Alison Hutchins
Chapter 5 discusses tiering assessments, and the best way to do so with different types of students. This was really helpful, as it is something that I have thought about quite a lot. How does one challenge the advanced students, and the students of lower readiness alike? While also not overwhelming any of my students? Tiering is to start in a less complicated area, and gradually develop into harder work, giving student individual attention to determine at what grade level each of your students is at, and what and how you need to be teaching them in accordance with that. I found the lists on pages 60 and 61 particularly helpful, as they give examples of grade level, advanced level, and early readiness level tasks and worked through ways that students in these categories could be challenged enough to grow at that level. The chapter also discusses learning contracts, which is a vehicle for tiering assessments, which is a very student-interactive way to assess development and mastery.They involve checkpoints for task completion, and assignment dates, as well as "contractual stipulations" (61), all of which are negotiated between teacher and student.
I would definitely be interested in using tiering in the classroom, as it seems like a great way to differentiate instruction. I have always worried that I wouldn't be able to challenge students at every level, and this definitely seems like a good place to start, though I do not feel like I have enough of a grasp on exactly how to execute it to use it were I in the classroom right now. The learning contracts are also interesting, but I feel like if they weren't set up in the right way they could overwhelm and possibly disinterest students.
Amy Jones
Chapter 5 discusses tiering and how it can be incorporated. Tiering stated simply is the action in which we as teachers make to make assignments more challenging for some and less for others. The first thing we wont to understand about tiering is to expect “every student to demonstrate full proficiency with the standard, not something less.” (pg 56) Second is acknowledging the “most needed” skills in assignments that really matter. An important tip “to avoid a potential pitfall with tiering, [is to] be sure to stay focused on one concept or task. (pg 57) The chapter continues with explaining various methods in tiering and assessments that can be very useful in helping your students. Some of these concepts are: Learning Contracts: These are helpful in communicating with your student in a way that explains what there are expected to get done but also helps the student and teacher to find various ways that will help the student through their learning style barriers and the time barriers. A great assessment idea that I will defiantly using in my class is a form of the Tic tac toe. I know from personal experience that this concept works very well with students just like myself and also the students that were nothing like me. The concept requires students broaden their sense of learning styles in a way that they get to create. This assessment style uses the themes of differentiated instruction and tiering and makes the student feel as though they are directly impacting their learning
Molly Olsen
Tiering an assignment means to start less complicated or smaller, and gradually assign a task or question made more difficult or larger. You may decide to use a teiring model to plan what you will be teaching in a lesson to students who are on-grade-level, below it, or above it. If you choose to do this, it is best to begin with the on-grade-level students curriculum, because starting higher or lower than that can skew how you view the on-grade-level assignments, causing you to expect too much or too little.
Other forms of differentiating and tiering tools include: Tomlinson's Equalizer (a set of coupled words which can lead you to decide where your lesson falls between them, and if that needs to be changed), Learning Contracts (a contract signed by both teacher and student (and sometimes parent) when the current curriculum isn't working for the student. The contract states that a student will finish certain tasks by a set time or return to the planned curriculum), Learning Menus (a list of options to choose from to complete a project or check for understanding), Tic-Tac-Toe Boards, Cubing, RAFT(S) (other option-based game-like tools), Summarization Pyramid (a structure to answer questions or perform tasks in), and Frank William's Taxonomy of Creativity (achieving "Fluency", "Flexibility", "Originality", "Elaboration", "Risk-Taking", "Complexity", "Curiosity", and "Imagination")
One of my favorite parts of the chapter was where it explained how to "change the verb". An example on page 71was taking the original task of asking "What's a mantissa?" And replacing it with the more elaborate, "Interview the mantissa of a logarithm (the decimal/fraction part) about its role in a logarithm." By making the task sound more dynamic, students will be more interested in exploring the answers and will be more likely to challenge themselves creatively with their replies. As a student I always responded better to these and saw them as creative challenges, so I will also try to change my verbs to light a fire under my students.
Table of Contents
Tess Perry
Abstract
All students need to be challenged appropriately, which means meeting students at their level. Some may be more advanced and others may need extra support. The technique of tiering provides options and alternatives aimed towards students of a variety of levels. The different levels described in this chapter include student readiness to learn and be challenged and their individual learner profile. All students should be sufficiently challenged to ensure engagement regardless of student’s previous knowledge and skills. By determining student’s readiness level and ability a teacher will be able to tier lessons, assignments and assessments appropriately. This chapter provided numerous examples of ways to tier classroom activities, these include, learning contracts, learning menus, RAFTS, Tic-Tac-Toe boards, change the verb prompts, cubing, one word summaries and many others.
Synthesis
Many of the examples described in the chapter allow students to choose different portions of the assessments or assignments. Giving students autonomy was a popular idea among our class’s reflections. Many reflections positively mentioned that allowing students choices in their assignments gives students independence and control which will hopefully keep them engaged, motivated and involved. Everyone appreciated the ample amount of tiering suggestions. I think as new teachers many of us feel that creating enough lessons, assignments and assessments and also individualizing each activity to meet all students’ needs is overwhelming and we may run out of creative ideas. Another point of trepidation is finding the appropriate balance of differentiated lessons, we cannot teach each student individually all day. Sharing ideas and methods that have worked for other teachers is helpful! Some of the tiering examples that were frequently mentioned in our reflections were learning menus and contracts and Tic-Tac-Toe boards.
Kiera Timme
In Chapter 5, of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, the author Rick Wormeli advocates for the use of “tiering” (p.56) as a means to better differentiate assignments and assessments. Tiering is a process by which teachers increase, or decrease, the level of difficulty of an assignment or assessment depending of the learners “readiness levels” (Wormeli, p56). This idea echoes back to Vgotsky idea of a “zone of proximal development,” (Wormeli, p73) in which the learner is given tasks, that are not too easy or too difficult, but can be achieved through the support of a guide or, as in this case, a teacher. The chapter provides several examples of ways to tier assessments. These include: equalizers, learning contracts, learning menus, tic-tac-toe boards, cubing, summarization pyramids, and one-word summaries.Of all the ideas presented in this chapter, the one that appealed to me the most was the use of learning menus. Not only did I enjoy the novelty of using a menu format, I really loved the fact that this method gives students the opportunity to make their own choices. When students are able to make decisions about their educations they are more likely to be motivated to complete the task. The learning menu has other added benefits. In having a student choice component, teachers are provided with a great opportunity to incorporate the multiple intelligences (MI) theory into the mix. Each element on the menu could be constructed with one or more intelligences in mind. This way, students provided with an opportunity to demonstrate their learning in a way that suits them, and it provides teachers with another opportunity to assess students’ multiple intelligences.
Frank Makuch
Tiering is an important aspect of differentiation. Tiering to cater to more and less advanced students allows all students to be adequately challenged and therefore more likely to be engaged. Certain aspects of a unit should be tiered and not necessarily everything about the subject. Tiering for advanced students will involve thinking of creative questions that might force the student to manipulate the information in different ways. Adding unexpected elements or reframing a topic is a good way to get more advanced students more stimulating ways to show their knowledge and understanding. The author offers different activities to tier assignments. These include learning contracts, learning menus, tic tac toe boards, cubing and summarization pyramids. The most interesting and useful of these is the tic tac toe board in which students are able to differentiate for themselves. They are given a tic tac toe board that has different assignments in the squares. The student gets to choose which three assignments he is to do provided they are in a line. Another way is to use RAFTS. This is a process by which students assume a role or perspective to write from on a specific topic. The audience must be kept in mind as well. Many of these ideas seem like they could work very well in a social studies or english class. Tiering in a mathematics class seems like it would be much more difficult. Because math classes are more linear than other courses I think tiering might have to involve letting some students veer off the path that the rest of the students take.
Garrett Hodgkins
In chapter 5 the writers discuss how to "tier" a students assessments or problems to that particular student's readiness level. This is something that goes two ways. It does no only mean toning something down for someone who isn't quite at the expected readiness level, it also means toning it up for those who are past it, that way everyone can be nurtured and no one gets left behind, or doesn't get to meet their full potential. The book goes into detail on how to do both of these, while avoiding some of the pitfalls that could come with. It also goes into learning contracts, a tool where the teacher can set the standards of what they want the student to meet, but the student gets the opportunity to negotiate due dates, and things of that nature. It goes into many other styles of tiering as well.
I particularly enjoyed this chapter because I always new that I would have to find a way to make sure that students who were not as ready as other students could still learn and perform well in my class, as well as cater to those students who were ready to move behind the normal class average. This chapter gave me some useful tips and strategies so that I will be able to do so.
Sean Falasca
Tiering [[#|assignments]] for students who are at different levels of learning is the opening of chapter five. Differentiating assignments at differentlevels of learning is something teachers do to make understanding easier for s student, not make the assignment easier than everyone else. We don’t need to tier for every assignment. We should expect all students to demonstrate full proficiency. Having a student start out at the benchmark, or lowest point, may inhibit their learning. Starting at full proficiency guarantees the student the opportunity to demonstrate their full knowledge and understanding. Using equalizers is also a way to make sure students have full comprehension. Grouping elements together that don’t seem alike, but are on totally different spectrums of one another. If a student can pick out continuums from a lesson then they most likely have an excellent mastery of the lesson. Another helpful tool a teacher can use to closely monitor is a learning contract. You can set rules and checkpoints to present behavior and content expectations. My favorite activity for tiering is the RAFT(S) activity. Choosing content and presenting different scenarios to effectively communicate the big ideas is an excellent idea. Having students choose their own roles, audience, format, or topic (or time) is a great way for students to show you how they like to learn and be creative in their demonstrations. I never thought that by using certain verbs, writing prompts could seem so much more alive to a student. I will try and use this strategy because as a student I remember looking at some prompts and not being very excited or motivated to write it even if I had a lot of knowledge to work with.
Tess Perry
Tiering is the process of modifying assessments and assignments to best meet individual student needs. Students individual needs can be described as student readiness to learn and be challenged and their individual learner profile. The goal of tiering is to challenge all students regardless of their previous knowledge and skills either above grade level, at grade level or below. The teacher’s role is to identify which level each student is currently working at and be creative to challenge all students without the students realizing who may be a little ahead and who are slightly behind. Many of the examples described allow students to choose different portions of the assessments or assignments. Tic-Tac-Toe boards provide three options in three rows; students pick and choose their task, one item from each row. This example, like others mentioned, gives student’s independence and control over their assignment but since the teacher creates all the options the concept that is assessed is similar for all students.In previous readings regarding differentiation the concept sounds ideal, but the thought of actually carrying it out, modifying lessons, assignments and assessments seemed a little overwhelming. The idea of allowing students to choose their assignment takes a little pressure off me as the teacher. I would imagine students would select items that they are interested in, which will help keep them engaged, or select items that play to their strengths. One example of tiering that interested me was the one-word summaries. Having to describe a concept in one word requires serious thought and consideration. Encouraging students to think deeply about concepts in my lesson will be awesome!
Kaitlyn Bowie
The focus of this chapter is on the idea of providing options and alternatives for students who might be on different learning levels. One of the strategies talked about in this chapter is the splitting up of lessons into tiers. A teacher starts off by setting a standard bar for the entire class, which means that a teacher must not undermine the intelligence of the students. At the same time, a teacher must make sure not to set the bar too high, or else they risk receiving inaccurate data about the intelligence of their students. Setting a median bar allows for teachers to easily add information for those students who require more of a challenge, and further break down a standard for students who are struggling.This practice is something I would certainly try to integrate into my classroom. However, I am concerned with how students will receive when they are told they are beneath the class standard and will require alternative work. Some students would take that as an insult, and feel their peers will label them as stupid because they fall under the “remedial” category. There is also the parental aspect to think about. Some parents may blame the teacher because their child is beneath the standard, or why their student is not being placed above the standard. While I do agree that students should be challenged and helped as needed, I struggle with balancing the ethical and emotional aspect that attaches to it, and the stigma that follows leveled instruction.
Tori Penney
This chapter was very exciting for me because I have been thinking about this a lot as we have been reading about assessments. How do I manage to “tier” the work and assessments so that my students can honestly be successful and grow? All students need to be challenged a little or else they cannot grow. How do I challenge students enough and not too much? And how do I manage the different levels of challenge needed by the different students? Tiering helps meet the needs of students who are not ready yet, who aren’t interested, or who have trouble because of their learning styles. “Ratcheting,” which is what I have been thinking mostly about, is when you adjust solely because of a student’s readiness level, and not their interests or learning styles. The list on page 57 and 58 was very interesting to me because it gave ideas on how to challenge a student further, and since I plan on going into Gifted & Talented education, that was really important and stuck out a lot to me.A suggestion that Wormeli gives is a learning contract. In a learning contract students get to move at their own pace, and simply check off the things they have already completed. I feel like this is good for some students but not all. A lot of students lack the ambition to continue going on without the full guidance that traditional teaching gives. I believe giving some students the option would be good, but you always need to make sure they are actually pushing themselves and focusing on the work at hand. This is something I may use in my classroom, if we get stuck in a rut.
Jon Delorme
Chapter 5 – Tiering Assessments
In a differentiated classroom, tiering is often used to provide the right level of challenge to the right students. The example given in Chapter Five is how a teacher might tier a lesson about graphing mathematical equations. For Early Readiness Students certain aspects of the problem are given to the student to help them understand the concept. For Advanced Readiness Students the problem difficulty is increased, something “Ann Tomlinson calls ‘ratcheting’ up or down the challenge level (56).” It is my understanding that this is one of the hot items discussed about Differentiated Instruction. To some teachers it may seem like being easy on some students and harder on others. I believe Wormeli is trying to explain is that the job of teachers is to help students understand and learn. If providing tiering helps a student do so them I am all in. People learn at different speeds, so why not provide assistance where assistance is due?
Another suggestion to help tiering lessons is using a learning contract. I am less inclined to use this tool than learning menus, however. Learning menus are similar to “drop-down menus in a favorite word processing package” where a student can choose specific criteria they want to meet (62). The teacher establishes certain tasks that are non-negotiable. But, the student can set up their own checkpoints on progress and other areas they want to explore. The most appealing method of tiering to me is using the Tic-Tac-Toe Board, and I will certainly be using this in my classroom in the future. This concept allows students to fill out tasks in separate columns. Each task utilizes one of the multiple intelligences. I really like this idea and when I first read about it over winter break I instantly knew I wanted to implement it some day.
Caroline Murphy
The whole concept of tiering is a little bit confusing to me, and I think I would need to learn more about it in order to figure out how to implement it in my classroom. But the chapter did have a lot of good ideas about how to give students choices for how they want to be assessed, and how to also appeal to the many different learning styles in a differentiated classroom. I think the idea of a learning contract between a student and their teacher could be a good thing, because it keeps the student personally accountable for their work and gives them the needed autonomy. But I can also see how such a long list of rules and requirements could be overwhelming and off-putting to a student, so I think that kind of rubric should be used sparingly and only when the teacher knows that it will be very beneficial to the particular student. The ‘change the verb’ form of tiering is something that I would definitely use in my future classroom. I had never realize before how much impact the wording of a question or assignment could have on the way a student perceives it, but it really does make a big difference. Being as specific as possible really helps students get the most out of the assessment, and it encourages direct, purpose-driven thinking. Any project or assessment based off of a question or prompt should be active thought-provoking, because an assessment that is designed in a way that does not actively engage student thinking does not showcase their best work.Alison Hutchins
Chapter 5 discusses tiering assessments, and the best way to do so with different types of students. This was really helpful, as it is something that I have thought about quite a lot. How does one challenge the advanced students, and the students of lower readiness alike? While also not overwhelming any of my students? Tiering is to start in a less complicated area, and gradually develop into harder work, giving student individual attention to determine at what grade level each of your students is at, and what and how you need to be teaching them in accordance with that. I found the lists on pages 60 and 61 particularly helpful, as they give examples of grade level, advanced level, and early readiness level tasks and worked through ways that students in these categories could be challenged enough to grow at that level. The chapter also discusses learning contracts, which is a vehicle for tiering assessments, which is a very student-interactive way to assess development and mastery.They involve checkpoints for task completion, and assignment dates, as well as "contractual stipulations" (61), all of which are negotiated between teacher and student.
I would definitely be interested in using tiering in the classroom, as it seems like a great way to differentiate instruction. I have always worried that I wouldn't be able to challenge students at every level, and this definitely seems like a good place to start, though I do not feel like I have enough of a grasp on exactly how to execute it to use it were I in the classroom right now. The learning contracts are also interesting, but I feel like if they weren't set up in the right way they could overwhelm and possibly disinterest students.
Amy Jones
Chapter 5 discusses tiering and how it can be incorporated. Tiering stated simply is the action in which we as teachers make to make assignments more challenging for some and less for others. The first thing we wont to understand about tiering is to expect “every student to demonstrate full proficiency with the standard, not something less.” (pg 56) Second is acknowledging the “most needed” skills in assignments that really matter. An important tip “to avoid a potential pitfall with tiering, [is to] be sure to stay focused on one concept or task. (pg 57) The chapter continues with explaining various methods in tiering and assessments that can be very useful in helping your students. Some of these concepts are: Learning Contracts: These are helpful in communicating with your student in a way that explains what there are expected to get done but also helps the student and teacher to find various ways that will help the student through their learning style barriers and the time barriers. A great assessment idea that I will defiantly using in my class is a form of the Tic tac toe. I know from personal experience that this concept works very well with students just like myself and also the students that were nothing like me. The concept requires students broaden their sense of learning styles in a way that they get to create. This assessment style uses the themes of differentiated instruction and tiering and makes the student feel as though they are directly impacting their learningMolly Olsen
Tiering an assignment means to start less complicated or smaller, and gradually assign a task or question made more difficult or larger. You may decide to use a teiring model to plan what you will be teaching in a lesson to students who are on-grade-level, below it, or above it. If you choose to do this, it is best to begin with the on-grade-level students curriculum, because starting higher or lower than that can skew how you view the on-grade-level assignments, causing you to expect too much or too little.Other forms of differentiating and tiering tools include: Tomlinson's Equalizer (a set of coupled words which can lead you to decide where your lesson falls between them, and if that needs to be changed), Learning Contracts (a contract signed by both teacher and student (and sometimes parent) when the current curriculum isn't working for the student. The contract states that a student will finish certain tasks by a set time or return to the planned curriculum), Learning Menus (a list of options to choose from to complete a project or check for understanding), Tic-Tac-Toe Boards, Cubing, RAFT(S) (other option-based game-like tools), Summarization Pyramid (a structure to answer questions or perform tasks in), and Frank William's Taxonomy of Creativity (achieving "Fluency", "Flexibility", "Originality", "Elaboration", "Risk-Taking", "Complexity", "Curiosity", and "Imagination")
One of my favorite parts of the chapter was where it explained how to "change the verb". An example on page 71was taking the original task of asking "What's a mantissa?" And replacing it with the more elaborate, "Interview the mantissa of a logarithm (the decimal/fraction part) about its role in a logarithm." By making the task sound more dynamic, students will be more interested in exploring the answers and will be more likely to challenge themselves creatively with their replies. As a student I always responded better to these and saw them as creative challenges, so I will also try to change my verbs to light a fire under my students.